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Windows 7: Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

Hello,
I've followed the steps in OPTION TWO of this tutorial, since my OS is Windows 7 Home Basic.
1) Opened an elevated command prompt, as described in the indicated topic;
2) When I typed the command net user administrator /active:yes , the system returned the message:

The user name could not be found

For more help, type NET HELPMSG 2221.

So, after a lot of searching, I've discovered that the problem was that my system language is Brazilian Portuguese (I'm Brazilian, by the way). So, changing the command line to net user administrador /active:yes it worked as well as it should. Note that the word "administrator" was placed by "administrador", its translating in Portuguese. I think that it could help for the ones with systems in other languages too.

Best Regards,

negrometal

Hello Negrometal, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Thank you. I have added a note for this in OPTION TWO so that it will be able to help others. :)

Hello,
This thread is very interesting as usual on this forum.
As we are talking about full rights Administrator Account ,I will have a question,I wanted to discuss for long time already !
Let say,I am the one and only user on my machines (my wife is afraid even touching the mouse )
Why will I hesitate to be always logged as "Big chief "
Of course, I already know your answers
But could you give me good arguments for or against
I mean good arguments,not for exemple: virus infections...or it is not recommended etc...
I want to be able to decide the worth of it based on pro and cons conclusions

The best argument I can think of for against this is that not only do you have full access to everything on the computer while logged on to the built-in Administrator account, but so does everything that is running. Including malware.

Normally when logged into a normal administrator account, you would have UAC as a last line of defense to ask you to give permission when anything tries to run as administrator (elevated) before letting it do so. You do not have this while logged on to the built-in Administrator account.

Hello Brink,
this is a very reasonnable answer , but not enough convicing
as you surely aware of, a good active resident guard from a good firewall, deeply configurate
will offer equal or even best protection than the UAC settings
I prefere and easily accept the frequently and annoying prompts from my firewall resident guard,then I'll do from the UAC one's
In my opinion,there is no possible comparison in terms of efficency between this two solutions
by the way,my UAC is disabeled and all my bets on Comodo firewall

Not using the built-in Administrator account unless really needed is just another layer of built-in security and protection. That's all. If you use common sense along with other security measures to fill all aspects of this loss of protection, then that will help to minimize the risk.

It's really just up to you and what your needs are. If you are ok with losing that layer of protection for being able to always have full control, then that is your prerogative since it's your system. However, if you do not need to have full control of everything all of the time, then why put your system at additional risk for no reason. To each their own though. :)

Hello,
you are absolutely right !
Anyway,I don't use this account permanently
I just wanted to have other opinions on this subject,as I am very new to Seven,only 2 weeks
thank you for your explanations

I tried to enable the Administrator account and get "system error 5 has occurred" followed by "access denied".

I'm on a new laptop. First time with Windows 7. Would like my user account to not be the administration account just on general principles. But tried to create an administrator account and was told it already exists, yet it doesn't show up. this shouldn't be this difficult. Either its there, or its not there, and I should be able to control it. Don't know what the average person does.

The Administrator account does already exist, as the computer stated. I recommend using option 2 of this tutorial, as I find it to be the easiest one. Remember that it must be an elevated command prompt. To make it an elevated command prompt, right click command prompt in the start menu and select "Run as Administrator". This gives you control through command prompt that you would otherwise only have when logged into the Admin account. If you need clarification on any instructions, let me know and I will try my best to explain more thoroughly what to do. Please let us know the outcome of you next attempt to activate the admin account.

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